Publisher

Rights Holder

Provided By

UNT Libraries

With locations on the Denton campus of the University of North Texas and one in Dallas, UNT Libraries serves the school and the community by providing access to physical and online collections; The Portal to Texas History and UNT Digital Libraries; academic research, and much, much more.

Degree Information

Description

Temporal Distortions is 18-20 minutes in length and is written for an orchestra including 2 flutes (2nd flute doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 Bb clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, 3 percussionists playing tri-toms, vibraphone, snare/tenor drum, medium suspended cymbal, Glockenspiel, bass drum, and large tam-tam; and multiple string parts for violin I a & b, violin II a & b, viola a & b, cello and double bass. Temporal Distortions was inspired by the theoretical concept of "wormholes" in space, where matter is warped through distorted passages connecting distant and diverse parts of the universe. The work is in three sections, connected without break. The first section, Space, emerges as a wide, expansive musical area where themes and gestures are freely presented. Gradually, these materials come into phase with one another, building to a climax. A transition follows, leading into the middle section, Wormholes, where the materials are frequently and suddenly transformed into other temporal elements. The third section, Comets, was inspired by the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with the planet Jupiter in July of 1993. Driving, underlying rhythms propel the thematic material through a series of statements which split into more and more substatements. This leads into a turbulent, explosive section and a final wormhole which returns to the opening material. Five basic temporal elements -- sustaining, aligned/non-repeating, aligned/repeating, non-aligned/repeating, and non-aligned/non-repeating -- are derived and demonstrated. Relationships between these elements are examined, and basic transformations are discussed. These elements serve as the basis for a theory of temporal analysis applicable to both metered and non-metered music. Chapter I presents this theory, and Chapter II discusses its application as a compositional method in Temporal Distortions.

Collections

This dissertation is part of the following collection of related materials.

UNT Theses and Dissertations

Theses and dissertations represent a wealth of scholarly and artistic content created by masters and doctoral students in the degree-seeking process. Some ETDs in this collection are restricted to use by the UNT community.